DESCRIPTION

A really simple TCP Git daemon that normally listens on port "DEFAULT_GIT_PORT"
aka 9418. It waits for a connection asking for a service, and will serve
that service if it is enabled.

It verifies that the directory has the magic file "git-daemon-export-ok", and
it will refuse to export any Git directory that hasn’t explicitly been marked
for export this way (unless the --export-all parameter is specified). If you
pass some directory paths as git daemon arguments, you can further restrict
the offers to a whitelist comprising of those.

By default, only upload-pack service is enabled, which serves
git fetch-pack and git ls-remote clients, which are invoked
from git fetch, git pull, and git clone.

This is ideally suited for read-only updates, i.e., pulling from
Git repositories.

An upload-archive also exists to serve git archive.

OPTIONS

--strict-paths

Match paths exactly (i.e. don’t allow "/foo/repo" when the real path is
"/foo/repo.git" or "/foo/repo/.git") and don’t do user-relative paths.
git daemon will refuse to start when this option is enabled and no
whitelist is specified.

--base-path=<path>

Remap all the path requests as relative to the given path.
This is sort of "Git root" - if you run git daemon with
--base-path=/srv/git on example.com, then if you later try to pull
git://example.com/hello.git, git daemon will interpret the path
as /srv/git/hello.git.

--base-path-relaxed

If --base-path is enabled and repo lookup fails, with this option
git daemon will attempt to lookup without prefixing the base path.
This is useful for switching to --base-path usage, while still
allowing the old paths.

--interpolated-path=<pathtemplate>

To support virtual hosting, an interpolated path template can be
used to dynamically construct alternate paths. The template
supports %H for the target hostname as supplied by the client but
converted to all lowercase, %CH for the canonical hostname,
%IP for the server’s IP address, %P for the port number,
and %D for the absolute path of the named repository.
After interpolation, the path is validated against the directory
whitelist.

--export-all

Allow pulling from all directories that look like Git repositories
(have the objects and refs subdirectories), even if they
do not have the git-daemon-export-ok file.

--inetd

Have the server run as an inetd service. Implies --syslog (may be
overridden with --log-destination=).
Incompatible with --detach, --port, --listen, --user and --group
options.

--listen=<host_or_ipaddr>

Listen on a specific IP address or hostname. IP addresses can
be either an IPv4 address or an IPv6 address if supported. If IPv6
is not supported, then --listen=hostname is also not supported and
--listen must be given an IPv4 address.
Can be given more than once.
Incompatible with --inetd option.

--port=<n>

Listen on an alternative port. Incompatible with --inetd option.

--init-timeout=<n>

Timeout (in seconds) between the moment the connection is established
and the client request is received (typically a rather low value, since
that should be basically immediate).

--timeout=<n>

Timeout (in seconds) for specific client sub-requests. This includes
the time it takes for the server to process the sub-request and the
time spent waiting for the next client’s request.

--max-connections=<n>

Maximum number of concurrent clients, defaults to 32. Set it to
zero for no limit.

--syslog

Short for --log-destination=syslog.

--log-destination=<destination>

Send log messages to the specified destination.
Note that this option does not imply --verbose,
thus by default only error conditions will be logged.
The <destination> must be one of:

stderr

Write to standard error.
Note that if --detach is specified,
the process disconnects from the real standard error,
making this destination effectively equivalent to none.

syslog

Write to syslog, using the git-daemon identifier.

none

Disable all logging.

The default destination is syslog if --inetd or --detach is specified,
otherwise stderr.

--user-path

--user-path=<path>

Allow ~user notation to be used in requests. When
specified with no parameter, requests to
git://host/~alice/foo is taken as a request to access
foo repository in the home directory of user alice.
If --user-path=path is specified, the same request is
taken as a request to access path/foo repository in
the home directory of user alice.

--verbose

Log details about the incoming connections and requested files.

--reuseaddr

Use SO_REUSEADDR when binding the listening socket.
This allows the server to restart without waiting for
old connections to time out.

--detach

Detach from the shell. Implies --syslog.

--pid-file=<file>

Save the process id in file. Ignored when the daemon
is run under --inetd.

--user=<user>

--group=<group>

Change daemon’s uid and gid before entering the service loop.
When only --user is given without --group, the
primary group ID for the user is used. The values of
the option are given to getpwnam(3) and getgrnam(3)
and numeric IDs are not supported.

Giving these options is an error when used with --inetd; use
the facility of inet daemon to achieve the same before spawning
git daemon if needed.

Like many programs that switch user id, the daemon does not reset
environment variables such as $HOME when it runs git programs,
e.g. upload-pack and receive-pack. When using this option, you
may also want to set and export HOME to point at the home
directory of <user> before starting the daemon, and make sure any
Git configuration files in that directory are readable by <user>.

--enable=<service>

--disable=<service>

Enable/disable the service site-wide per default. Note
that a service disabled site-wide can still be enabled
per repository if it is marked overridable and the
repository enables the service with a configuration
item.

--allow-override=<service>

--forbid-override=<service>

Allow/forbid overriding the site-wide default with per
repository configuration. By default, all the services
may be overridden.

--[no-]informative-errors

When informative errors are turned on, git-daemon will report
more verbose errors to the client, differentiating conditions
like "no such repository" from "repository not exported". This
is more convenient for clients, but may leak information about
the existence of unexported repositories. When informative
errors are not enabled, all errors report "access denied" to the
client. The default is --no-informative-errors.

--access-hook=<path>

Every time a client connects, first run an external command
specified by the <path> with service name (e.g. "upload-pack"),
path to the repository, hostname (%H), canonical hostname
(%CH), IP address (%IP), and TCP port (%P) as its command-line
arguments. The external command can decide to decline the
service by exiting with a non-zero status (or to allow it by
exiting with a zero status). It can also look at the $REMOTE_ADDR
and $REMOTE_PORT environment variables to learn about the
requestor when making this decision.

The external command can optionally write a single line to its
standard output to be sent to the requestor as an error message when
it declines the service.

<directory>

A directory to add to the whitelist of allowed directories. Unless
--strict-paths is specified this will also include subdirectories
of each named directory.

SERVICES

These services can be globally enabled/disabled using the
command-line options of this command. If finer-grained
control is desired (e.g. to allow git archive to be run
against only in a few selected repositories the daemon serves),
the per-repository configuration file can be used to enable or
disable them.

upload-pack

This serves git fetch-pack and git ls-remote
clients. It is enabled by default, but a repository can
disable it by setting daemon.uploadpack configuration
item to false.

upload-archive

This serves git archive --remote. It is disabled by
default, but a repository can enable it by setting
daemon.uploadarch configuration item to true.

receive-pack

This serves git send-pack clients, allowing anonymous
push. It is disabled by default, as there is no
authentication in the protocol (in other words, anybody
can push anything into the repository, including removal
of refs). This is solely meant for a closed LAN setting
where everybody is friendly. This service can be
enabled by setting daemon.receivepack configuration item to
true.

EXAMPLES

We assume the following in /etc/services

$ grep 9418 /etc/services
git 9418/tcp # Git Version Control System

git daemon as inetd server

To set up git daemon as an inetd service that handles any
repository under the whitelisted set of directories, /pub/foo
and /pub/bar, place an entry like the following into
/etc/inetd all on one line:

In this example, the root-level directory /pub will contain
a subdirectory for each virtual host name supported.
Further, both hosts advertise repositories simply as
git://www.example.com/software/repo.git. For pre-1.4.0
clients, a symlink from /software into the appropriate
default repository could be made as well.

git daemon as regular daemon for virtual hosts

To set up git daemon as a regular, non-inetd service that
handles repositories for multiple virtual hosts based on
their IP addresses, start the daemon like this:

In this example, the root-level directory /pub will contain
a subdirectory for each virtual host IP address supported.
Repositories can still be accessed by hostname though, assuming
they correspond to these IP addresses.

selectively enable/disable services per repository

To enable git archive --remote and disable git fetch against
a repository, have the following in the configuration file in the
repository (that is the file config next to HEAD, refs and
objects).

[daemon]
uploadpack = false
uploadarch = true

ENVIRONMENT

git daemon will set REMOTE_ADDR to the IP address of the client
that connected to it, if the IP address is available. REMOTE_ADDR will
be available in the environment of hooks called when
services are performed.